Archive for July, 2011

Spelling mistakes: were you going for rude or inept?

When I first started working with web content it amazed me that people could merrily create web pages with spelling and grammar mistakes on them. It just seemed like a basic consideration that you would ensure that you had spelled things correctly – and not a difficult one to achieve.

Talk about naïve.

Asking questions, or lessons from ordering goats’ cheese

Services that are worth their salt don’t just give you what you want. I noticed this the other day when I was buying cheese from a proper cheese shop.

The shopkeeper (fromager?) started asking me questions. What kind of goat’s cheese? Is it with other food, after dinner – what’s the menu? When are you eating it, tonight, or in a few days?

When I walked in there I had a fair idea what I wanted. Within seconds of conversation, I realised that I had a lot to learn about selecting cheese. I also had a much better picture of what would work. After a short while, I was asking the man behind the counter for recommendations.

Sweet taste of success

Congratulations to SweetBar, who (I have just found out) were awarded Small Business of the Year Winner 2010 by Companies Made Simple.

SweetBar provide an old-fashioned pick and mix sweet cart for weddings and other occasions, and as you can imagine, need an effective website to back up their word of mouth recommendations and take bookings.

Last year SweetBar took up my offer of a free hour’s content work. I wrote them some copy for use on their front page. Many things have changed since I sent the words through but I notice that some of the copy was in place for the winning version of the site.